Some Thoughts on "The White Lotus"
Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 12:00PM by Eric Blume
With the Emmy Awards ahead of us this coming weekend, it seems like a good time to start discussing a show that will likely make a killing at next year's Emmys, Mike White's HBO show The White Lotus. It's been the talk of the industry this summer, and rightfully so, as there's nothing quite like it. This intense ensemble comedy-drama-satire-tragedy is incredibly dense, so to start off the discussion, I thought I'd offer just a few of the very difficult things that writer-director Mike White accomplished with such intelligent success...
Mike White writes almost one dozen characters with full arcs. An inevitable challenge with a multi-character piece is that usually at least a few of the journeys feel limited, not fleshed out, or less involving than others. But White wrote his ten lead roles with incredible precision and great care. Every single one of them has their own odyssey, and each one changes or calcifies based on what happens during the week at that resort. Because White charts these experiences with such delicacy and depth, there's never a lull where you're hoping one scene ends so you can get to the good stuff. Everything is the good stuff.
Mike White directs those ten actors, plus others, to devastating performances. The acting fireworks are off the charts throughout this show, and you can practically smell the live-wire energy bouncing off these actors. You get the sense that every actor knew they had a great role, and moreover that the director believed in them and specifically what they were bringing to the part. Hopefully in the comments you'll offer your thoughts on who the MVPs were (for me, gun-to-the-head it's Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge), but not one player disappoints. It was particularly fun to see White bring Steve Zahn back and tap into his abililty to find complexity in comedy, and to see him continually find new, revealing layers of confidence and vulnerability in Alexandra Daddario. He even casts Molly Shannon against type for a non-comic role to deliver some juicy dramatic weight. Another director certainly wouldn't give Jake Lacey so much texture to convey in his white-jerk-guy role, and he keeps the wonderful Natasha Rothwell at just the perfect tempo of pathos for six hours.
Mike White shifts perspectives. White set up the show with protagonists from various social and economic strata, placing them in a strategic roundelay of interplay. The scene where the two young girls torture Daddario's character at the swimming area because they think she's stupid gets a harsh, final trump card when Daddario takes off her robe and descends in perfect physical power into the pool. Daddario is then later humilated in a harsh scene against Connie Britton. White launches the show with a horrific side plot of a local Hawaiian woman who feels forced to conceal her advanced pregnancy so she can get that desperately needed job, butted up against a shocked boss (Bartlett), who himself is lying his way through the days to keep his job. But part of the deep beauty of the show is that White gives everyone their absolute full due. The most privileged of this clan (the Zahn/Britton family, Coolidge, Lacey) aren't judged by White...we see their pain as well, and their pain is real and beautifully realized. But White is smart enough to place them in scene after scene where we see the perspective of the other characters who don't have that privilege, and he doesn't need to push the subtext. It all plays out naturally in these shifting perspectives, and he has the confidence and artistry to let it ride.
Mike White sticks the landing. The series' finale episode wraps up its many plot strands with scenes that satisfy dramatically in the traditional sense, but also reek of ambiguity and a linger that will continue offscreen for these characters. There's a noted evolution for everyone, but not a tidy resolution. Most of them will continue the patterns we've watched them wrestle with so painfully. But the writing and direction of these scenes is exactly what you want from these final confrontations...the language is so lean and economical, and continuously true to character. White gives us the joy we want seeing Fred Hechinger literally run from his family's deeply-entrenched privilege, but he denies us the pleasure of seeing Daddario leave Lacey. He gives Jennifer Coolidge's character a twisty surprise happiness, but one that won't last very long. Murray Bartlett gets one of the most twisted but true redemptions we've seen in a character in a long time. The final confrontation between the two young girls (beautifully performed by Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O'Grady) grimly cements their vast divide. White's accomplishment in this final episode is really pretty mind-blowing.
I could go on, because I think the show is a stone-cold masterpiece, and a genuine original. But what are your thoughts about this summer's hottest TV show? Favorite characters? Most hated characters? Favorite performances? Anything that didn't work for you? Please drop your thoughts in the comments as always...
Reader Comments (23)
Daddario, Rothwell, and Bartlett were MVPS for me.
Thought Daddario was MVP
Have only seen the first two episodes but was hooked midway through episode one! So good to see Murray Bartlett again, have had a little crush on him since Looking. And he's just great in this, as is everyone else.
I really loved it and think White nailed it, as you say. It was very gripping considering its lack of traditional plot, but that just goes to show how good the characters and performances were.
My favorites were Coolidge, Bartlett and Sweeney. Coolidge was unique and reminded us how much we take her for granted, Bartlett had the kind of role every gay actor wants but just doesn't get written and Sweeney -who didn't make an impression to me on Euphoria- created something instantly recognizable, current and despicable. But everyone was good, Jake Lacy was cast against type and was perfect and Zahn squeezed out everything that delirious character had inside. Beautiful monsters.
It also goes to show how in this era there's space for these white privileged characters we're so used to if you reference that privilege. We got all the traditional happy endings we've seen countless times in movies (beautiful couple reunites at the airport! family grows stronger over crisis! woman gets another shot at love!), but they're all bitterseet here given that we understand there are other perspectives.
The only thing it lacked to bring that point home, in my opinion, was more awareness of the Hawaiian people. We just didn't get enough characters, and the ones we did didn't have names (the rowing group) or didn't get a complete arc (Kai and the pregnant woman). If White was pointing fingers at these people who come and colonize this land, he could've had more awareness of the people they were affecting.
But it's a good start considering he wrote the thing during the pandemic and shot it so quickly. Can't wait for season 2 and I hope he brings Coolidge along.
I have reservations about the mini-series. The inherent message that the perceived shifts in society have had zero effect on racism and white privilege is no surprise to people of color. Well, maybe to the characters of color in The White Lotus, it’s an eye opener.
The screenplay asks the viewer to believe that wealthy and needy Tanya McQuoid has a genuine interest in investing substantial cash in the business dreams of Belinda Lindsey, a hotel spa manager she just met. No self respecting black woman of a certain age would see this for anything more than it is – a lonely white woman assuming a woman of color of moderate means would be thrilled to have a free, fancy dinner. From the first encounter to the final moment where Tanya crushes Belinda’s hopes and then returns for her designer sunglasses, the essence of white privilege would be obvious to Belinda who has been employed in this establishment for some time.
I adored it - I don't know if it quite needs all the deep opinion pieces it's getting but it was great.
I don't often laugh out loud at things but I howled at Jennifer Coolidge on the boat with the ashes - most I've laughed all year, somebody give the woman an Emmy.
Finbar -- i think you're underestimating everyone's need to believe in solutions to what feel like insurmountable problems (and that's true regardless of skin color -it's just human nature). I completely bought that Belinda would behave as she did (and it's not as if she ever completely believed it given Natasha's brilliant delineation of Belinda's dreams and her own nervous reality checks about the situation) and that Tanya would also behave as she did I dont think the screenplay ever asks us to believe this is definitely going to happen... just that Tanya deludes herself about it happening and Belinda reluctantly deludes herself because we all want solutions to our problems.
Eric -- loved this piece. Bartlett, Rothwell, and Coolidge were the MVPs for me.
Adored this - and I pray voters remember it at the next Emmys a year from now.
Category placement should be interesting...
Loved it. Coolidge and Daddario were great, but loved Murray Bartlett maybe most of all (and I hadn’t seen him in anything before). He gets maybe the show’s funniest line when Zahn asks him if anal sex hurts: “Do you want to find out?”
“i think you're underestimating everyone's need to believe in solutions to what feel like insurmountable problems (and that's true regardless of skin color -it's just human nature).”
You’re white Nathaniel
Coolidge is my MVP. Overdue frontrunner for the Emmy next year so far, unless Chastain barrels through.
I completely agree with Nat. Didn’t you see the series? Belinda saw some hope in getting put her rut and now everyone tries to bring out the race card lmao
I'm in awe of Mike White.
Loved this piece! I also agree that it is a masterpiece.
Jennifer Coolidge, Natasha Rothwell, Murray Bartlett and Alexandra Daddario were the best for me (in that order). I'm still reeling from Daddario's scene with Connie Britton.
@Fadhil Mentioning race and class differences is not "playing the race card" esp when the creator admits he baked these concepts into the story. The reality is there is no universal womanhood or manhood. There are often different consequences along class and race lines and being honest about that in a creative way is part of art.
Please read about how Black women in the South were forced to be employed under WWII,because they middle class White wanted their maids. Ordinances were actually passed saying Black women could lose benefits they were getting because they husbands were fighting because they chose to stay home with their children instead of working underpaying jobs. Long story short, people of color know this history and we are not easily fooled.
Also not the above example and how working class people are "lazy" for not jumping back into frontline, pandemic jobs.
Ava -- of course i'm white. But, respectively, it's counterproductive when people act like different skin color means different species.
Natasha Rothwell was brilliant in this and wholly convincing about why her character would hope against hope for this. Nowhere in the entire performance is she showing you that she's "easily fooled" and nowhere in the writing are we asked, as Finbar suggests, to "believe" that Tanya is going to do this. Tanya is obviously troubled and flaky and needy from the jump. The series is not asking us to believe her -- it's showing us how this human being behaves. Belinda is continualy nervous about it but forces herself to be hopeful and does the work because what's the other option? To *not* dream and hope that she can improve her career?
In her beautiful performance you see all the things that the criticisms suggest she *would* be feeling instead of believing wholeheartedly that his WILL happen so frankly the criticism doesn't hold water to me. I'm sure the criticism would be true in a lot of other contexts but within THIS series it doesn't really make sense because the point of the criticism is directly embedded in both the writing and the performances.
Agreed with much of what’s been said. An instant classic. Though I would quibble with your assessment that Molly Shannon’s character wasn’t comedic. She totally was.
Top 3 performances for me were Jake Lacy, Sydney Sweeney, and Fred Hechinger. The kids really nailed it.
Everyone was fantastic though.
I love everyone's differing opinions on MVP...that's how insane this ensemble was! It'll be tough to narrow down for the Emmys, especially if they all go supporting. You could fill whole categories from this show alone.
In an effort tot bring closure to this debate about the character of Belinda Lindsey, I read the interview published this week with actress Natasha Rockwell about The White Lotus.
The actress shares that the character wasn't written to be played by a Black actress. Rockwell states she immediately recognized that the casting decision would read differently to viewers.
Rothwell, a veteran scribe from SNL and HBO's Insecure, began writing sessions with Mike White. "And so he really allowed me to ... develop Belinda and speak to the nuance because it wasn't about giving her more page real estate," she emphasized. "It was about understanding the quiet storm that Black women carry inside us, when we have to be in those situations where privilege and your paycheck are at risk if you were to act out of pocket."
During the interview Rothwell was asked if that memorable eyeball when addressing the emotional Rachel in the season finale was scripted. "I just did that," Rothwell said. "I don't say a ton over the course of the series, but I'm just reacting and expressive."
"Belinda can only say so much and do so much because she's trying to walk this line of being content and aspirational," she continued, referencing her character's desire to start her own wellness center. "She's in a position of power with a lot of these guests because they need her, but at the same time she's supposed to be servile."
Rothwell said those nonverbal moments that cue viewers into what Belinda is really feeling behind her courteous smile is like "a pressure valve or release ... it's just allowing that energy inside of her to do something. Where it's just like, I can't say it. I can't walk out of here, but I can just breathe."
Daddario, Sweeney, Zahn, and Bartlett were the standouts for me.
Finbar -- thanks for sharing. You can often tell when an actor really takes ownership of a role and for me she was easily one of the show's mvps. crossing my fingers for an Emmy nomination a year from now.
MVPs: Daddario, Rothwell, Bartlett
I loved the show, but I have a lot of (read: too much) patience and capacity for fictionalized critiques of white privilege that center the white perspective, as tired as I am of them. Thank God they cast Rothwell as Belinda.
I will add, Fred Hechinger was one of the few things that *didn't* work for me. He was too old to play a high schooler (looked early 20s trying to be 16, but behaving like a 13 year-old) and his emotional stuntedness felt blank and non-responsive, instead of pensive/questioning. At times I thought he was trying to play the character on the spectrum, other times I wasn't sure. But I thought his final scenes showed promise and his arc was very satisfying.